The Uptime blog

Lower Demand for Aftermarket Service Raises Challenge for OEMS and Dealers

A Volvo service technician uses the Volvo VIDA application in a dealership service bay. As customers start returning to automotive showrooms, they seem to be avoiding service departments. According to NADA figures (as reported by Richard Truett in the November 2, 2009 issue of Automotive News), parts and service revenues at ...

Safety is Not a Strategy

Depending on your industry, the word "safety" may conjure up images of protecting customers, co-workers, the general public or the environment. Regardless of your perspective, for companies that operate complex equipment, improving safety is not a strategy it's a moral imperative. But safety comes with a price—time and money. Safety ...

Helping MROs Fly Again

The November, 2009 issue of Air Transport World has a good article about the MRO business, in which Chris Spafford, a partner with Oliver Wyman, is quoted as saying, “the rebound appears to be very, very extended, 2010 will look a lot like 2009 from a market perspective. It will ...

Old Cars and Spare Parts

Our suspicions have been confirmed, people are driving old cars longer. R.L. Polk & Co. conducted an analysis of more than 249 million vehicles and for the 12 month period ended June 30, 2008 they concluded that, “Americans are keeping their cars and trucks on the road for record periods ...

Statistically Speaking—Your Technical Support Stinks

Lots of OEMs fail to provide useful technical support for their dealers. Recently, Carlise & Company started reporting results from their 2009 NASPC North American Automotive Service Manager Survey. Responses were received from over 9,000 dealer fixed operations managers representing 20 different brands. (Therefore, the survey seems to have statistical ...

From the Field—Airline & Aerospace MRO & Operations IT Conference

Enigma and Korean Air at MRO IT conference in Bangkok, Thailand From left: Yeon-Kweon Lee, Deputy General Manager, Korean Air; Asher Gabbay, VP of EMEA & APAC, Enigma; Sung-Yeon Park, Deputy General Manager, Korean Air Last week I attended the Airline & Aerospace MRO & Operations IT Conference in Bangkok, organized by Aircraft Commerce magazine. This ...

Focus on Aftermarket Sales and Service at OpenWorld 2009

Service Transformation: that’s what Oracle calls its initiative to help manufacturing companies and maintenance providers improve their aftermarket sales and service business. There were more than 20 different sessions at OpenWorld 2009 that focused on the needs of, and opportunities for, manufacturers and service providers. Topics included: maintenance planning, maintenance ...

Maintenance Info – The Elephant Hiding in the Hangar

There’s an elephant hiding in the corner of every airline hangar that performs maintenance (or that manages a 3rd party MRO). That elephant is the technical information from Boeing and Airbus—maintenance manuals, parts catalogs, service bulletins, etc. In the September 28 issue of AviationWeek, Robert Wall decided to shine a ...

Modernize Parts Purchasing or Miss Out

What’s the difference between shopping for service parts on the NAPA website and shopping for parts at an OEM website? Not much according to research by Carlisle & Co. Both web sites seem to be aimed at parts experts, who already know what they want. Contrast that to AutoZone, where ...

Safer Skies – Improving the Implementation of Airworthiness Directives

According to a Fact Sheet on Airworthiness Directive Compliance, "The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is strengthening the procedures used by air carriers, manufacturers, and the FAA to ensure that air carriers comply with Airworthiness Directives (ADs)." If the FAA is worried about airlines’ compliance with ADs, perhaps you should be ...

Report from the SAP Airline Summit: The Role of Service Information in MRO Scheduling and Maintenance

I just came back from the SAP Airlines Summit in Texas, which assembled over one hundred airline and MRO professionals from around the world: an impressive cross-section of the commercial aviation industry. Jonathan Yaron, Enigma’s CEO, sat on a panel with Yasushi Suzuka, Vice President - Maintenance Corporate Planning & Administration, ...

It Takes More Than a Fancy Cell Phone to Help Field Service

I've received a lot of webinar invitations recently that all say something like: "Revolutionize Your Business by Connecting the Enterprise to the Field." My first thought is always: What a great topic! Connecting field and back office operations really does improve decision-making and streamline business operations. But then I realize ...

Relief for the Automotive Sector

It's not exactly what I would call a light at the end of the tunnel, but it is encouraging to read in Bob Ferrari's "Supply Chain Matters" blog that Ford and GM have announced they will be increasing production for the remainder of 2009. Reportedly, Ford will increase production 18 percent in ...

The Road to Recovering Profits – Aftermarket Advice from an Analyst

We've written a couple of blogs lately about the importance of aftermarket strategy in a recession, so I'm glad to point to an article that validates what we've been saying, "Survival Strategies for Aftermarket Vendors in a Recessionary Economy," published by a Frost and Sullivan analyst. Analyst Ratika Garg writes that ...

Bridging the Service and Parts Silos

As I work with companies from many different industries, I'm always surprised by the number of organizations that have separate applications to manage and deliver their parts and service information. The service department often operates very independently from the parts department; the two departments use different applications to handle their ...

PDF Is Not a Dirty Word

Deciding what to do when an OEM changes the maintenance procedures is a tremendous burden for many airlines. For most MRO modifications, choosing whether to adopt the new procedures is left up to the airline. The industry hoped that by implementing XML/SGML documentation standards, smarter change management systems would emerge. And, ...

SaaS and FUD

The other day, an editor for an aviation industry magazine asked me if Enigma could be deployed in a “Software as a Service” (SaaS) environment. The answer is, “Yes.” He then asked if any of our airline customers had SaaS deployments. The answer is, “No.” The next question was easy ...

The Only Way Forward for the Aftermarket?

The big news in automotive isn't that OEMs are closing dealerships; the big news is how the closed dealerships are responding. Two recent articles from Automotive News highlight the risk faced by OEMs: "As dealerships close, online parts retailers step up" "From Chrysler to...NAPA?" Both articles highlight how resourceful businesses are taking advantage ...

Applying B2C Lessons to the B2B Aftermarket

Last May, CRM Magazine wrote an article about retailing and the Web called, “Selling Out: Have retailers, desperate for survival, abandoned their commitment to the customer experience?” This concerns me because, in my opinion, most B2C companies do a better job using the Web than B2B companies. So if the B2C ...

If a Tweet Falls in a Forest…

You probably already know that Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? There's a lot of discussion these days in B2B marketing about whether Twitter is catching on in some industry ...

The Easiest Customer to Win

Can an effective aftermarket strategy affect new product sales? I would argue that yes, indeed it can. In my opinion one of the most overlooked and undervalued aspects of providing a first-class aftermarket environment is the strong relationship and brand recognition it enables companies to build with their customers throughout ...

Capturing Maintenance Experience: Two-Way Knowledge Transfer

We all know that there is a massive wealth of knowledge that is accumulated by the shop floor engineers and mechanics—the ones who are getting their hands dirty performing the maintenance tasks day in and day out. But capturing that information has always been somewhat elusive. Whether you call it ...

Where to Invest In a Down Economy…Before It’s Too Late

Listening to the financial news these days can be very depressing. Worldwide GDP is in decline along with worker productivity and factory orders. With that many companies have (and rightly so) ratcheted down their corporate spending on everything from travel and personnel hiring to IT infrastructure. However, there are signs ...

Mitigating the Loss of Closed Dealerships

A March, 2009 press release from Lang Marketing highlights a risk facing OEMs as they downsize their dealer networks. According to Lang, “most of the more than $7 billion in 2009 parts and service sales abandoned by closing dealers (at user-price) will be captured by independent (non-dealer) service outlets and ...

Cleansing Old Data to Drive New Business

Manufacturing companies trying to expand their aftermarket parts and service business must grapple with a problem that is unknown to most of their executives—the issue of old (or poor quality) product information. (i.e. maintenance manuals, service bulletins, technical specs, parts catalogs, etc.) Any customer with machines more than five years old ...

The Secret Ingredient for Successful EAM

In a recent survey of manufacturing executives, 54% of companies say that maintenance retirements will cost them more than $10MM over the next five years. And 31% estimated the cost at more than $50MM. According to Stephanie Neal's article in Managing Automation magazine, OEMs can't afford to make new capital ...

Simplifying Parts Sales; Make it Easy For the Customer

Recently I've been reading a blog called SPPLAN – Service Parts Planning. Shaun Snapp, the author, wrote a few pieces on his personal experience trying to order a part for his 1997 Honda Accord. In these blogs he touched on the opportunities available for OEMs to develop, what I call, ...

Reducing No Fault Found Events

There’s an interesting article by Michael Lam in Overhaul & Maintenance Magazine titled, “The Curious Case of the Irreproducible Result: Demystifying No Fault Found.” (A No Fault Found is an equipment problem reported during ordinary operations that can’t be traced to a specific cause and can’t be reproduced in a ...

How Fewer Dealers Can Sell More Parts

Chrysler wants to close 25% of its dealerships (almost 800) taking the total number down to about 2400. GM wants to close 40% of its dealerships to get down to about 3,600. These decisions reflect the fact that car sales are dropping from about 10M annually to about 7M and are forcing ...

MRO Americas – The Opportunities Ahead

I recently returned from MRO Americas, where I spent some time walking the exhibit hall, listening to various presentations and serving on a speaking panel, “Regulatory Compliance in the Digital Age.” Here are a few observations from my time in Dallas: the show was busier than I expected, despite the economy; ...

Aftermarket Innovation in a Recession – Part 2

The April 20, 2009 issue of BusinessWeek includes innovation survey data compiled by Boston Consulting Group. The survey data makes it clear that companies across the board are reducing innovation related to new products and services. The BW/BCG poll indicates that companies have become very conservative when it comes to ...

The 7 Steps to a Highly Effective Aftermarket

Following up on an earlier blog post titled “OEMs and aftermarket parts—a bigger piece or a bigger pie,” I wanted to mention a blog post by Carlisle & Company titled “Recession Busters and Low Hanging Fruit.” The article points out that there are some pretty straightforward steps that OEMs can take ...

In Aviation Maintenance, Nirvana is Now

Next week Enigma’s CEO, Jonathan Yaron, will be participating in a speaking panel, "Regulatory Compliance in the Digital Age," at MRO Americas. The panel will be discussing the future of regulatory compliance for aviation maintenance, with a particular focus on the role of industry standards and technology. Joining him will be ...

OEMs and aftermarket parts—a bigger piece or a bigger pie

Following up on an earlier blog post where we talked about “Getting a Bigger Piece of the Aftermarket Pie,” we found more support for our viewpoint in a recent blog post by Carlisle & Company titled “The Future of OEM-Dealer Business Model for Wholesaling Mechanical Parts to Independent.” According to the Carlisle ...

Innovation in a Recession

The April 6, 2009 issue of BusinessWeek includes an article by Dean Foust that lists the fifty best companies in the S&P 500—the BusinessWeek 50. The list was developed by measuring various financial criteria for each company as compared to their peers in the same industry sector. (The idea was to identify ...

The High Cost of Poor Maintenance

On August 6, 2005 a Tuninter ATR-72 aircraft attempted a water landing off the coast of Sicily and sixteen people died (23 survived). An Italian tribunal recently handed down seven convictions for this accident on charges ranging up to, and including, manslaughter and air disaster (Tuninter Pilots, COO, Technicians Convicted). ...

Change Management for Aviation Data

Airlines often have the challenge of adapting OEM data to meet their own maintenance requirements. One type of adaptation is called a Customer Originated Change (COC). Although it requires significant effort to manage COCs, it is usually worth the effort. COCs are derived from airline-specific business processes and experience, and ...

Getting a Bigger Piece of the Aftermarket Pie

A recent story on National Public Radio highlights a trend that we’re hearing about a lot lately: manufacturers have drastically reduced their production of new cars (logically, because they are not selling as many), while sales of aftermarket parts are dramatically increasing. Along with that, the average age of the ...

Automating the Aftermarket: From Picking Parts to Processing Orders

With much of the world in recession, industries that rely on capital equipment—like oil & gas, aviation and construction—are buying less new equipment these days. As OEMs sell fewer new units, they have shifted their focus to selling more spare parts. OEMs are seizing this opportunity because profit margins on aftermarket ...

Putting e-Business to Work

Companies that manufacture complex equipment are starting to invest in e-business solutions to help sell aftermarket parts. These are products like Oracle E-Business Suite, SAP mySAP Business Suite and IBM WebSphere Commerce. When linked to ERP, CRM and other supply chain systems, e-commerce products can significantly improve order management and ...

MRO Middle East, Part II

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently attended the MRO Middle East conference. I particularly like aviation conferences because, unlike in some other industries, the common aim of safety leads companies that would otherwise be mortal enemies to freely exchange ideas and enter into lively debate. At this conference ...

Report from MRO Middle East

A couple of weeks ago I made the trip to Dubai to attend the MRO Middle East conference. I went there to understand more about a region that still has GDP growth and, more importantly, is not cancelling/ deferring orders for aircraft. Considering that this was the first MRO Middle East conference sponsored by ...

Interlog Winter: a Dose of Sunshine for the Aftermarket

My team and I just got back a few days ago from Interlog Winter 2009, a conference that's focused on the aftermarket parts and logistics business for automotive, industrial and aerospace manufacturers. I was pleased to discover that attendees wanted to do more than soak up the sun on Marco ...

The Strategic Benefits of Effectivity

When evaluating the benefits of different maintenance information systems, features are often measured against increased efficiency. And of course, this is an important goal: Allowing engineers and technicians to work faster translates immediately into higher uptime and lower costs. But sometimes, features go beyond the tactical benefit of worker efficiency, by ...

The Aftermarket Beat Goes On

The aftermarket is not immune to the current economic climate; the slowdown in the automotive sector, for example, is obvious and understandable. But the fact that aftermarket trade shows and conferences such as InterlogWinter and Service Parts Inventory Management & Reverse Logistics Summit are still going strong is a good sign that ...

Aligning MTBF

During a recent conversation with Joe Barkai of IDC Manufacturing Insights, he mentioned that he's often asked about improving MTTR and FTFR but rarely MTBF. (For those of you that have forgotten your maintenance acronyms: MTTR is mean-time-to-repair, FTFR is first-time-fix-rate and MTBF is mean-time-between-failure.) It seems that the natural inclination ...

Focus on the Aftermarket in 2009

With all the projections of gloom and doom for the coming year, one area we’re not hearing about very much is aftermarket parts and service. Perhaps that’s because the economic downturn has a smaller effect on the aftermarket than it does on manufacturing. The reason is pretty obvious; the wear ...

1st Anniversary/ 50th Post – Thanks for a Great Year!

On December 9, 2007 the Uptime blog went live. Since then we have been posting stories almost weekly (this is the 50th post) about the state of affairs in aftermarket service and support. You, our readership, has grown significantly in the first 12 months and what started as an experiment ...

I Like the Way This Guy Thinks

An article in the November 2008 issue of Managing Automation focuses on the recent progress and future plans of Wonderware—a maker of operations management software and a division of Invensys. It was not the type of article I would normally read, after all it was focused on manufacturing execution and ...

The Forest or the Trees?

During this week’s Air Transport World webinar on Strategies for Unscheduled Aircraft Maintenance, a good question came in from an audience member, and I feel it deserves your attention. The questioner was asking about where to focus the time and energy of the maintenance department and his question highlights a ...